Dawntreader is one of the first really big side quests you can find in Avowed, with a satisfying dungeon crawl and plenty of story choices to make. Eventually, you’ll find yourself at a crossroads: Should you put the Splinter of Eothas in the statue or choose a different path?
As you’ll quickly learn in this game, there can be more than just one or two ways to go about things, and these branching paths can create different story experiences for your godlike as you try to unravel the mysteries of The Living Lands. Dawntreader also features an early opportunity to get yourself a unique sword, which can really help you out as you work towards upgrading the quality of your gear. This is an absolute necessity as you progress further into Avowed.
Struggling to make that final choice? Here’s everything you need to know about Dawntreader.
Table of contents
Avowed: Full Dawntreader quest walkthrough
How to start Dawntreader: Talk to Ofryc
There are a couple of ways you can start Dawntreader, but the most obvious one is to talk to Ofryc, who you can find just outside the Aedyran Embassy in Paradis after you’ve managed to enter the gates and come back from the dead. The Aedyran Embassy is back towards the front gates where you were shot with a poisoned arrow, and Ofryc is the man holding his shoulder outside the embassy with an arrow over his head. He’s hard to miss.
Ofryc is concerned for his brother, Caedmon. The pair of them were part of a team from the Aedyran Free Expedition Corps who had traveled to an Eothasian temple north of Paradis to speak to another godlike who the locals call the Oracle. The mention of another godlike should prick your ears, as the game’s lore will tell you they’re almost no other godlikes around these days besides you. And, if you keep questioning Ofryc about the Oracle, you’ll hear about his sword, which Ofryc claims is made of diamonds. That was good enough reason for me to take up the quest, as the common sword I had paired with my grimoire was quickly entering butterknife territory against stronger enemies.
You can also get hints about the Dawntreader quest from examining a body at the top of an elevator just north of Paradis if you go poking around and pick some locks, but I didn’t find this until after I finished the quest.
Find the Aedyran Expedition team
Go north towards Pilgrim’s Path, which will be marked on your map after talking to Ofryc. You’ll have to fight some Xaurips and a bear along the way. When you get to the Pilgrim’s Path, you’ll find Secgwin, who’s wearing the same gambeson as Ofryc, arguing about the temple being closed with Kauaia. You can talk to them—but you can also just run right by them and enter the temple.
Once inside, you’ll get to a small tutorial section showing off one of the game’s big dungeon mechanics: essence machines that can be activated with electricity, which frequently open doors. If you’re not a magic-user with electric spells on hand, you can chuck an Electric Lily Seed at them—there’s a couple conveniently placed in this first room.
You can open this door and clear out a few skeletons for some extra loot. And, in general, pick up Electric Lily Seeds whenever you see the spiky blue and purple plant crop up. They’re very useful, and there’s some good loot to grab if you have them.
Follow the cave path along, clearing out some xaurips along the way. Eventually, you’ll come to a section of ruin with some electrified water. Either jump over it or run right through it to the stairs along the back wall, and take those stairs up to find Caedmon, who looks very much like Ofryc and also has some injuries that need tending to. Heal him up either with a potion or the Healing Touch power you received from the Voice in the Strangleroot, and he’ll tell you his expedition leader, Gjeda, and the rest of the team pressed on into the ruin to find the Oracle and talk to him about some powerful relic. A powerful relic? Sounds like foreshadowing!
Speak with Sargamis, the Oracle
After speaking with Caedmon, continue to follow the cave path until you find a large, open area with a golden-skinned man in the middle examining the giant statue towering over him. That’s the Oracle you’ve been hearing so much about, and his name is Sargamis.
When you question Sargamis, he’ll tell you about the relic, the Splinter of Eothas, and how he needs it to finish his statue, but he’ll tell you he hasn’t seen the expedition team. Which, considering how close to Caedmon this area is, sounded suspicious to me immediately. That, and the fact that this whole area felt a lot like a boss fight arena.
Sargamis will ask you to get the Splinter for him as you continue your search for the expedition team. And you’re in a crumbling ruin in a magical fantasy world, so you’re most likely going to say “yes.”
Press further into the ruin
Follow your quest markers further into the ruin, which will also lead you to a library that seems to belong to Sargamis. Just before that, there’s some swimming sections you’ll need to go under water for, and another essence machine you can open with electricity. Do that and swim to the bottom of the newly-opened section to get a purple chest.
When you get to this library and study, there’ll be a few spiders to take out, and you can also interact with a large diagram just past where you’ll fight the spiders. The diagram shows off how the massive statue is actually powered by essence. Interesting.
You’ll keep pressing on through the caves, fighting some xaurips and water beetles along the way, before making it into the final chamber. Here, there’s another purple chest you can get by activating some essence machines: One in a room to the lower left of the chamber that you can see through a hole in the wall, and one up the stairs to the back, left of the Splinter itself. If you want to get all the loot in here before grabbing the Splinter, there’s also some vases to break to the right of the Splinter, creating gaps you can crawl through for some more loot and a surprise skeleton enemy.
How to beat the Godless Executioner
When you finally grab the Splinter of Eothas, you’ll trigger the Godless Executioner boss fight in this chamber. He hits hard, but he’s also big and slow, and his attacks are very telegraphed.
After you whittle his health down to half, he’ll start a new phase where he summons many more skeletons to help him fight. Make sure you take out the Skeleton Priest first to prevent the Executioner from getting more heals, then use Kai’s abilities to aggro the Executioner and take out the other lesser skeletons, leaving you with just the Executioner to worry about.
Finding the expedition team
At this point, you could just leave the cave and go back to Ofryc. But that wouldn’t be any fun, would it? As you exit the Godless executioner’s chamber, there’ll be a cave path to your right which you can climb up, helping you go towards that B marker to find the Aedyrans. At the top, you’ll notice a glowing purple crack in the ground, and a gap you can crouch through just on the other side. Go through that gap, then follow the path and drop down through the bigger hole in the cave floor.
You’ll find yourself in some sort of study, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s a bunch of dead bodies in there!
Yes, this is the rest of the Aedyran expedition, all dead. Gjeda’s journal will confirm their identities, and a talk with Kai will see you two put all of this together: Sargamis killed the Aedyrans to harvest their essence for powering his statue.
Confronting Sargamis: All consequences of putting the Splinter of Eothas in the statue
You can go confront Sargamis now, and he’ll readily admit to killing the expedition team before asking you to put the Splinter of Eothas into the statue. He wants to trap Eothas into the statue and give the god a mortal conscience so he can atone for what he did in the Deadfire archipelago (which was the events of Pillars of Eternity 2. The TL;DR is that Eothas killed a loooot of people).
There’s a few options you can take here, which will give you a few different outcomes.
Put the Splinter in the statue and give up your essence
This is technically an option, but one that will just result in your character’s death. You put the Splinter in the statue, only to reveal that the statue needs more juice. And the precise “juice” here is the essence of a godlike. That would be yours, which requires you to die. Enjoy the death screen while the game reboots your last autosave.
Put the Splinter in the statue, but convince Sargamis to give up his plan
This option will result in Sargamis surviving and you can also get his unique sword, Last Light of Day, if you talk to him in his study after leaving the ruin. I got this option by using the above Court Augur background dialogue option telling him to give up his plan, then using an Intellect of four or higher to convince him that his animancy practice is out of date and the statue won’t work. I’m not sure if other backgrounds can also access this dialogue path, but there does exist a way to both get the sword and leave Sargamis alive.
Fight Sargamis
At any point while confronting Sargamis, you can just say “screw this” and open up a fight, which will result in Sargamis dying and you being able to get his Last Light of Day sword. You’ll likely want the sword either way. It was the first unique weapon I got in my playthrough and was a definite upgrade over what I had been using.
Sargamis’ spells and swords can pack a punch, but if you use Kai’s abilities to aggro him and just dodge the blights he summons, continuing to deal damage to Sargamis, it’s a quick fight to clear.
You can also get this ending to the encounter if you destroy the machine by activating the three essence machines placed around this area. Sargamis will fight you after you’ve activated two of them.
Allowing the Voice in the Adra to enter the statue
A final option comes in the form of The Voice in the Adra, the same voice that spoke to you in The Strangleroot and that brought you back to life after you enter Paradis for the first time. It will ask you to put the Sliver of Eothas in the statue and activate it so that it can take on a more physical form. There’s not immediate harm or benefit to doing this; it just depends on if you want to be on the Voice’s good side or not.
Should you put the Splinter of Eothas in the statue for The Voice in Avowed?
Personally, I think you should kill Sargamis and then put the Splinter of Eothas into the statue for The Voice. You don’t technically have to kill Sargamis to get his sword, as previously stated, but the extra XP is nice, and it’s probably best to not let a guy willing to kill a lot of people in order to trap a murderous god in a statue just walking around, you know?
As for the Voice, I’ve played dozens of hours past this point and I still haven’t seen any tangible reward or harm from letting it take over the statue or not, but the Voice does help you out plenty in all of that time, and I’m prioritizing staying on its good side.
Published: Feb 13, 2025 01:07 pm